Car Dealers Don’t Want To Sell Electric Cars

[Sufu]

But for every one of you there are at least as many like my wife who does nothing herself and makes her service appointments religiously. As far as what a dealship will charge you for a tire rotation or whatever. They will charge what they have to charge in order to keep their doors open. The same will be true of tire stores, and any other business out there. If they can't do that and say the tire stores make it unprofitable for them to offer tire services, they will simply stop servicing and providing warranty on tires, (actually I suspect they would "farm it out" to the tire stores underneath their own warrantee cause they won't want to give that up).

Dealerships won't go out of business unless they become unprofitable and even with electric cars I don't see that happening because people have to have a viable option and that doesn't exist yet.

For every person as your wife, there's also one dealership that will charge her a fee for "battery electron conditioning" and "BLNK-1000 EV Blinker Fluid". There is little incentive for dealerships to maintain EVs, because warranty works pays them next to nothing, and that's all the work there is.

Tire stores will still exist and will still charge the 50-100% markup prices they usually do over places like tirerack.com. You will still have places that do custom work on cars - you just won't have traditional dealerships as you know them today. But to be honest, I bet the ICE will still be around for another 10-20 years before EVs become so common stream for any of this to happen.

 

[Lith1um]

Thorium mi amigo. Thorium.

We only have a waste problem because of the nuclear weapons lobby wanted to make reactors that were derivatives of nuclear weapons-material plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

Agreed. Even Alvin Weinberg disliked the concept of solid fueled, water cooled reactors.

He much preferred the concept of liquid fueled, molten salt cooled reactors. He even built a working molten salt reactor for the Air Force's "Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion" program, as well as a functional "jet" engine which was powered by the reactor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_M._Weinberg

Alvin Martin Weinberg (April 20, 1915 – October 18, 2006) was an American nuclear physicist who was the administrator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during and after the Manhattan Project. He came to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1945 and remained there until his death in 2006. He was the first to use the term "Faustian bargain" to describe nuclear energy.

A graduate of the University of Chicago, which awarded him his doctorate in mathematical biophysics in 1939, Weinberg joined the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory in September 1941. The following year he became part of Eugene Wigner's Theoretical Group, whose task was to design the nuclear reactors that would convert uranium into plutonium.

Weinberg replaced Wigner as Director of Research at ORNL in 1948, and became director of the laboratory in 1955. Under his direction it worked on the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion, and pioneered many innovative reactor designs, including the pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs), which have since become the dominant reactor types in commercial nuclear power plants, and Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor designs.

In 1960, Weinberg was appointed to the President's Science Advisory Committee in the Eisenhower and later served on it in the Kennedy administrations. After leaving the ORNL in 1973, he was named director of the Office of Energy Research and Development in Washington, D.C., in 1974. The following year he founded and became the first director of the Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).



Reactor development

The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) project was ORNL's biggest program, using 25% of ORNL's budget. The ANP project's military goal was to produce a nuclear-powered aircraft (a bomber) to overcome the range limitations of jet-fueled aircraft at that time. That the project had little chance of success was not overlooked, but it provided employment and allowed ORNL to stay in the reactor development business. ORNL successfully built and operated a prototype of an aircraft reactor power plant by creating the world's first molten salt fueled and cooled reactor called the ARE (Aircraft Reactor Experiment) in 1954, which set a record high temperature of operation of 1,600 °F (870 °C). Due to the radiation hazard posed to aircrew, and people on the ground in the event of a crash, new developments in ballistic missile technology, air refueling and longer range jet bombers, President Kennedy canceled the program in June 1961.[30][31]

Weinberg had the Materials Testing Reactor converted into a mock-up of a real reactor called the Low Intensity Test Reactor (LITR) or "Poor Man's Pile". Experiments at the LITR led to the design of both pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs), which have since become the dominant reactor types in commercial nuclear power plants.[32] Weinberg was attracted to the simplicity and self-controlling features of nuclear reactors that used fluid fuels, such as Harold Urey and Eugene Wigner's proposed Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor. Therefore, to support the Nuclear Aircraft project in the late 1940s, Weinberg asked ORNL's reactor engineers to design a reactor using liquid instead of solid fuel.[33]

This Homogeneous Reactor Experiment (HRE) was affectionately dubbed "Alvin's 3P reactor" because it required a pot, a pipe, and a pump. The HRE went into operation in 1950 and, at the criticality party, Weinberg brought the appropriate spirits: "When piles go critical in Chicago, we celebrate with wine. When piles go critical in Tennessee, we celebrate with Jack Daniel's."[25] The HRE operated for 105 days before it was closed down. Despite its leaks and corrosion, valuable information was gained from its operation and it proved a simple and safe reactor to control.[34] During the time the HRE was online, Senators Jack Kennedy and Albert Gore, Sr. visited ORNL and were hosted by Weinberg.[25]

Molten salt reactors

Weinberg noting "6000 full-power hours!" of MSRE operation in 1967.
ORNL shifted its focus to a civilian version of the meltdown-proof Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) away from the military's "daft"[35] idea of nuclear-powered aircraft. The Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) set a record for continuous operation and was the first to use uranium-233 as fuel. It also used plutonium-239 and the standard, naturally-occurring uranium-235. The MSR was known as the "chemist's reactor" because it was proposed mainly by chemists (ORNL's Ray Briant and Ed Bettis (an engineer) and NEPA's Vince Calkins),[34] and because it used a chemical solution of melted salts containing the actinides (uranium, thorium, and/or plutonium) in a carrier salt, most often composed of beryllium (BeF2) and lithium(LiF) (isotopically depleted in Lithium-6 to prevent excessive neutron capture or tritium production) – FLiBe.[36] The MSR also afforded the opportunity to change the chemistry of the molten salt while the reactor was operating to remove fission products and add new fuel or change the fuel, all of which is called "online processing".[37]

Biological and environmental studies

Under Weinberg's tenure as director, ORNL's Biology Division grew to five times the size of the next largest division. This division was charged with understanding how ionizing radiation interacts with living things and to try to find ways to help them survive radiation damage, such as bone marrow transplants. In the 1960s Weinberg also pursued new missions for ORNL, such as using nuclear energy to desalinate seawater. He recruited Philip Hammond from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to further this mission and in 1970 started the first big ecology project in the United States: the National Science Foundation-Research Applied to National Needs Environmental Program.[38]

Leadership

Weinberg speaks with Senator John F. Kennedy at Oak Ridge in 1959
In 1958, Weinberg coauthored the first nuclear reactor textbook, The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors, with Wigner. The following year, 1959, he was elected president of the American Nuclear Society and, in 1960, began service on the President's Science Advisory Committee under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.[39] Starting in 1945 with Patent #2,736,696, Weinberg, usually with Wigner, filed numerous patents on the Light water reactor (LWR) technology that has provided the United States' primary nuclear reactors. The main LWR types are Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), that serve in Naval propulsion and commercial nuclear power.[40] In 1965 he was appointed vice president of Union Carbide's Nuclear Division.[41]

In a 1971 paper, Weinberg first used the term "Faustian bargain" to describe nuclear energy:


We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society. On the one hand we offer—in the catalytic nuclear burner (i.e., the breeder)—an inexhaustible source of energy. Even in the short range, when we use ordinary reactors, we offer energy that is cheaper than energy from fossil fuel. Moreover, this source of energy when properly handled is almost nonpolluting. Whereas fossil-fuel burners emit oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur... there is no intrinsic reason why nuclear systems must emit any pollutant except heat and traces of radioactivity.

But the price that we demand of society for this magical source is both a vigilance from and longevity of our social institutions that we are quite unaccustomed to.[42]

Weinberg was fired by the Nixon administration from ORNL in 1973 after 18 years as the lab's director because he continued to advocate increased nuclear safety and molten salt reactors (MSRs), instead of the Administration's chosen Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) that the AEC's Director of Reactor Division, Milton Shaw, was appointed to develop. Weinberg's firing effectively halted development of the MSR, as it was virtually unknown by other nuclear labs and specialists.[43] There was a brief revival of MSR research at ORNL as part of the Carter administration's nonproliferation interests, culminating in ORNL-TM-7207, "Conceptual Design Characteristics of a Denatured Molten-Salt Reactor with Once-Through Fueling", by Engel, et al., which is still considered by many to be the "reference design" for commercial molten salt reactors.

 

[Lith1um]

Alvin Weinberg,

"It wasn't that I had suddenly become converted to a belief in nuclear airplanes. It was rather that this was the only avenue open to ORNL for continuing in reactor development.

That the purpose was unattainable, if not foolish, was not so important.

A high-temperature reactor could be useful for other purposes even if it never propelled an airplane."

Kirk Sorensen @ PROTOSPACE on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg&list=PL0B667156FE160377&index=2

 

[lcpiper]

I saw Bill Gates give a TED talk about TerraPower and it looks like it could pretty promising if they manage to get it working. Having a two stage design that results in nearly zero waste product would solve most of our current waste stockpile issues.

The rest you can fix when we start mining asteroids. Replace the mass we remove with waste mass we don't want. Heck, once the stuff isn't hot anymore we can mine them a second time

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Well, we still have that pesky little issue of final storage for highly radioactive waste to deal with.

Because of lock-in in the industry and the fact that some idiots made reprocessing spent fuel illegal. If we reprocessed, most of the fuel waste would cease being a problem.

Also, there's a storage problem NOW. It's sitting out in sealed casks, sometimes in parking lots, right now.

As for "highly radioactive". Sure, it's not something you want to be rubbing into your skin every day. But most of the waste coming out isn't that heavily radioactive. Conversely, it's VERY long-lived because of that.

That's the big problem. Sure, we can engineer a building to last a long time. 100 years? Sure. 500 years? Probably. 1000+ years? Maybe. 10,000-100,000+ years? NO FUCKING CLUE!

This is actually one of the things that makes moving to MSRs like Thorium reactors more attractive. The byproducts that AREN'T useful, are usually MUCH more radioactive (as in you don't want to be exposed, period). BUT, said byproducts decay FAR faster. Most in months/years. A few in decades. And most of the rest in a century or two. Making storage a MUCH more viable, and safe option.

As I understand, currently all U.S. nuclear waste dating all the way back to the late 50s is still stored in temporary storage pools.

You've been mislead then.

Plenty of adequate underground final storage solutions have been proposed, but the nimby's kill them every time.

This is the problem.

Everyone wants safe, abundant, emission free nuclear power, but no one wants the waste.

The problem is, they keep trying to reason with unreasonable, stupid people.

That, and uranium extraction and processing is rather carbon intensive, which offsets a large portion of the carbon neutral argument in favor of Nuclear power.

Whereas Thorium extraction is less intensive, and would actually jump-start the US rare-earths mining industry again, as most rare earths bring up lots of thorium as well.

Nuclear power also winds up being relatively expensive per kilowatt compared to other sources.

Mostly due to punitive regulatory concerns.

With the rapidly falling prices of solar and wind, I imagine in a few years time, no one will be talking about nuclear anymore.

Wrong! The main problem is that solar and wind have huge land-use concerns, as the general energy density of a solar facility is rather low. The solar thermal solution is actually a denser solution, but the power output is a tiny fraction of the output of an equivalently sized nuclear facility.

That doesn't even begin addressing the issues of environmental/ecological damage building solar/wind facilities create. Nor does it touch on the fact there are areas of the world where such solutions simply don't make sense.

And, since we DON'T have a decent national power grid, the options for out-of-state generation are FAR more limited. Even so, that'd just turn it into a bunch of haves and have-nots.

Sure, you could pave over most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada with solar and wind facilities and have HUGE output. But we can't ship most of that power more than a state or two away. And are other states just supposed to become chattel to the states that provide the energy?

Also, since we don't have any decent storage mediums for true bulk storage, what happens during spikes in demand or falloffs in output (since wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine)?

 

[FndTheRver]

A dealership not wanting to sell me a car is ok. It's when the dealership colludes with the government to prohibit the manufacture from selling me a car is where I have a problem.

I hate $stealerships as much as the next guy, but there is a little bit of history that should be brought up. Back in the day, auto manufacturers acted like dicks. They required that auto dealers pay cash up front for all cars, and that they buy cars from them on a prearranged schedule, no matter how many cars they had on the lot. Imagine trying to run a business like that.

So the dealers got together and influenced lawmakers to get laws passed about car dealer franchises. I'm sure that car dealers try to milk the system (e.g. pay off politicians) to get the most advantageous system for themself.

I think that car franchises should go away (manufacturers should be able to sell direct if they want to), and that car sales places should not be allowed to do maintenance services.

 

[Lith1um]

78 percent of the US spent fuel inventory is stored in spent fuel pools. Only 22 percent is stored in casks.

Spent Fuel Storage in Pools and Dry Casks
Key Points and Questions & Answers

Key Points:

1.All U.S. nuclear power plants store spent nuclear fuel in "spent fuel pools." These pools are robust constructions made of reinforced concrete several feet thick, with steel liners. The water is typically about 40 feet deep, and serves both to shield the radiation and cool the rods.


2.As the pools near capacity, utilities move some of the older spent fuel into "dry cask" storage. Fuel is typically cooled at least 5 years in the pool before transfer to cask. NRC has authorized transfer as early as 3 years; the industry norm is about 10 years.


3.The NRC believes spent fuel pools and dry casks both provide adequate protection of the public health and safety and the environment. Therefore there is no pressing safety or security reason to mandate earlier transfer of fuel from pool to cask.


4.After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the NRC issued orders to plant operators requiring several measures aimed at mitigating the effects of a large fire, explosion, or accident that damages a spent fuel pool. These were meant to deal with the aftermath of a terrorist attack or plane crash; however, they would also be effective in responding to natural phenomena such as tornadoes, earthquakes or tsunami. These mitigating measures include:
a.Controlling the configuration of fuel assemblies in the pool to enhance the ability to keep the fuel cool and recover from damage to the pool.
b.Establishing emergency spent fuel cooling capability.
c.Staging emergency response equipment nearby so it can be deployed quickly


5.According to the Congressional Research Service (using NEI data), there were 62,683 metric tons of commercial spent fuel accumulated in the United States as of the end of 2009.
a.Of that total, 48,818 metric tons – or about 78 percent – were in pools.
b.13,856 metric tons – or about 22 percent – were stored in dry casks.
c.The total increases by 2,000 to 2,400 tons annually.

Source:http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html

 

[Lith1um]

If our government had taken a different fork in the road the world may have never known an accident such as Fukushima.

Nuclear Disasters & Coolants - "Th" Thorium Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pyq8kCeiYs

 

[Deleted member 126051]

If our government had taken a different fork in the road the world may have never known an accident such as Fukushima.

Nuclear Disasters & Coolants - "Th" Thorium Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pyq8kCeiYs

Basically if Nixon hadn't been such a crooked, contrary piece of shit.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Hehehe, reminds me of the original wasteland when you went to the Temple in Vegas (??) all the acolytes going "NRC NRC NRC"

 

[nutzo]

And that's cause they employ people. The charging station concept will never fly and electric cars are not going anywhere either, not unless you can get a good day's charge at night from your home or apartment. If you can't charge up at night or while you aren't driving then it just isn't going to fly. Charging stations will be relegated to highway traffic and a few, "fast charge stations" for those who need one, and you'll pay big for that juice.

And this is why Electric cars will remain a small percentage of cars sold for many years. Nobody want to wait around for an hour or more waiting for the car to charge so they can drive another 50 miles.

Even the Tesla, at their super charger station, take 30 minutes to give you a half charge.

Tesla, an expensive car has been built around the most advanced battery pack available, still only gets 270 miles with a full charge under ideal conditions. Try driving at 75MPG with the air or heat blasting, and the mileage will drop noticeably. A type ICE car will get 400-600 miles on the highway before needed a fill-up, and after 5 minutes you are back on the road.

Most other electric cars are like the Leaf. Small cars with a limited range that don't even have room for a spare tire, yet cost more than a nice mid-sized car.

When I can buy a midsized electric car or a small SUV, that gets 400+ miles on a charge, still has room for a spare tire, a good sized trunk, 5 passengers, and can be charged in less than 15 minutes, I'll consider a electric car, assuming it also doesn't cost much more than an ICE/Hybrid. I don't see this happening for a long time considering current battery technology, as we would need at least 8 times the current power/density of the current batteries.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Try driving at 75MPG with the air or heat blasting, and the mileage will drop noticeably.

Uh...